Bummed to end the week on such a sad note but Slide.com is officially shutting down for good on March 6th 2012. The company was founded in 2005 and pivoted through several major focuses including MySpace apps, to Hi5, to Tagged, across blogs, and eventually Facebook. Slide hit a fervor peak in January 2008 when they raised $50MM on a $500MM valuation and led the way of companies leveraging the Facebook platform to grow fast and furiously. Unlike game companies like Zynga and Playdom they were never able to really monetize their massive amounts of traffic.
I sat through a Slide sales team pitch in 2007 when I worked in the product marketing team at EA. It was the first time I ever saw Keith Rabois who came along to support. They were shilling $150k packages for Super Pokes and other virtual goods. The impression numbers were insane, but we never bought in and neither did many other companies. Apps like Top Friends and Top Fish grew like crazy while the Facebook platform was a free for all, but once they reigned in app permissions and publishing rights, these were the first to drop off the map.
They could never transition into the profitable company or space that Zynga pulled off, and they were eventually bought by Google as they tried to put together their social strategy for going after Facebook. While at Google they launched several non-Google branded products as an experiment to test engagement on new products without the expectations of the Google brand. Sad day though to see it finally, officially get shut down.